But what people say and what they do are often different. And there are both victims and criminals in black communities.

Victims may trust the police for the same reasons that criminals dislike them. Blacks are not a monolithic group: blacks who who have been through the criminal justice system as criminals could answer these questions quite differently than those who have relied on police as victims.

Most violent crime victims don’t report crimes to police. For example, only about half of rapes are reported to police. That has a lot to do with how victims believe they will be treated by the police. In the case of rape, victims who think that the police are unsympathetic to rape victims or are unlikely to solve the cases are even less likely to report rapes.

If black victims really believe police are racist, why would they report the crime to the police? Blacks victims don’t want other blacks locked up simply due to their race; they want the criminals who actually committed the crime punished. . . .